After that scene, as I was ushered out of the experience, I realized that I had spend nearly three hours in the warehouse, but that I hadn’t looked at my phone or my watch once during the whole time. I read ten pages of a taxidermist’s field guide, only to find a diary entry on the eleventh page which painstakingly outlined the taxidermist’s desire to skin a beautiful woman that he passed in the street that day.įinally, I observed a banquet executed in beautiful slow motion, with Banquo arriving last as a bloody spectre. I saw what appeared to be a formal ball which quickly devolved into a fight between a bald witch and Macduff (at least I think it was Macduff). I saw a dwarf portraying a nurse, wondering aimlessly through the forest. I walked through the Sanitarium to find a woman, probably Lady Macbeth, washing the blood off of her body in the tub, crying quietly. ![]() ![]() For example, I just happened to wander into what would be, if I were seeing a strict interpretation of Macbeth, the second prophecy, but in Sleep No More, is more of an orgiastic rave, complete with strobe lights, house music, and full nudity. As such, any scenes I saw were disjointed and difficult to place into context, even when accompanied by the swelling music and film noir-style soundtrack. I opted not to shuffle along with the hordes, and chose to simply explore on my own terms instead. Each scene is repeated three times throughout the course of the evening, and attendees are encouraged to follow the character of their choosing around the massive structure. Patrons are released into the warehouse at intervals of 15 minutes, and as such, the first scene you experience might be chronologically out of order. Unless you know Macbeth incredibly well (and even if you do), it’s challenging to figure out what’s actually happening at any given time. They can also get disturbingly close to the actors, some of whom are in various states of dress-everything from formalwear to complete nudity happens within the warehouse, and it all feels a bit voyeuristic at times. The mask, styled like one you’d see at a masquerade ball, is intended to provide a certain level of anonymity to the visitors, who are allowed to rummage through drawers, open envelopes, read books, dump suitcases out on the floor, and generally act like they own the place. Within the structure, you’ll find a jazz club, a hotel, two apartments, a sanitarium, a forest, a graveyard, a city street with multiple shops, a ballroom, and much, much more, all of which are presented in a perfect, Hitchcock-style milieu. There’s very, very little information given to the patrons, who are simply handed a mask and told that “fortune favors the bold” before they’re dumped out into the warehouse, which is immaculately prepared. Sleep No More takes place on six floors of a giant warehouse, and the actors are more accurately described as dancers. The whole performance is set in 1929, and it’s not a play in the strictest sense-there’s no dialogue, no seating, not even a stage. It’s loosely based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth, with elements of some Hitchcock films like Rebecca and Vertigo. ![]() I had that feeling last Tuesday on the west side of New York City after experiencing the “immersive theatre experience” called Sleep No More, which has been selling out every night, non-stop, for eight years. you ever gone to see a play, perhaps a movie, or even visited an art museum, and walked out thinking, “What the hell was that?”
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